About Full FactFull FactFF_625f9074-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd613715Full Fact is the UK's independent factchecking charity. A registered charity (no. 1158683) and a non-profit company (no. 6975984) limited by guarantee and registered in England and Wales.Full Fact StaffWill MoyDirector -- Will has been the Director of Full Fact since 2010, through three referendums, the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, the European Parliamentary and 2015 and 2017 general elections. He appears regularly on TV, radio, and at events to discuss Full Fact's work and factchecks, as well as giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry and select committee inquiries. Before Full Fact, Will worked for the non-party affiliated peer Lord Low of Dalston and the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Transport Safety.Mevan BabakarDigital Product Manager -- Mevan manages our digital products and previously our supporter communications. She leads on all our automated factchecking work, and the website. She also ran the election and referendum crowdfunding campaigns, the latest raised over £100,000. Mevan joined Full Fact in 2014 after working at Cancer Research. She helped build Bite the Ballot where she launched Britain’s first ever National Voter Registration Day. She graduated with a Masters in Bioengineering from the University of Sheffield.Claire MilneWriter/Researcher -- Claire joined Full Fact in May 2016. She previously worked as researcher in the Office of The Prince of Wales where she covered issues such as housing and planning, and heritage projects. She has also worked for a consultancy in Scotland providing advice to the not-for-profit sector. She studied History at the University of Aberdeen and received an MLitt in Modern Historical Studies.Jill RutterExternal Relations Adviser -- Jill joined Full Fact in 2015 to help develop our external relations. She divides her time between Full Fact and the Institute for Government, where she is Programme Director. Prior to joining IfG, Jill was Director of Strategy and Sustainable Development at Defra, and has also worked in the Treasury and No. 10. She is a regular commentator on issues of effective government, appearing on the Today Programme, Start the Week, The World at One, and others.Mike HughesStatistical Adviser -- Mike Hughes served as a statistician in the Government Statistical Service for over 35 years, holding senior appointments in a number of departments. His last post was as the Director of Policy in the Office for National Statistics.Charlotte RossOperations Manager -- Charlie joined Full Fact in September 2017. Before joining Full Fact, she lived in Australia for a year, and worked for Committee for Sydney, a not for profit think tank. Prior to that she worked for Centre for London a politically independent think tank and charity that generates ideas and solutions to improve London. She graduated from Canterbury Christ Church University with a degree in Primary Education.Joël RelandFactchecker -- Joël joined Full Fact in 2017 as an intern. He researches and writes factchecks. He previously worked for Policy in Practice, analysing the impact of the transition to Universal Credit on local authorities, and for the polling and research consultancy Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. He has a BA in History from the University of Cambridge, and an MSc in International Political Theory from the University of Edinburgh.Joseph O'LearySenior Writer/Researcher -- Joseph is Full Fact’s lead on data and the presentation of statistics. He has been a factchecker at Full Fact since 2011; he produced our internal graphs style guide which has contributed to GSS guidance; and he leads our consulting work in this field which has included controlling the production of all graphs for Sky News’s 2014 party conference coverage. He represents Full Fact at events and on the media, including briefing the Jeremy Vine show and speaking at the GSS Presentation and Dissemination Conference.Phoebe ArnoldHead of Communications and Impact -- Phoebe manages the follow up work that emerges from individual factchecks, including corrections requests, FoI requests, parliamentary work and publicity. She managed Full Fact’s submission to the BBC Trust’s Impartiality Review, and has delivered training to Chequeado, Argentina's factchecking organisation, on how to achieve impact with factchecks. She is also responsible for Full Fact’s interventions into patterns of inaccuracy – this can range from submissions to select committees or referring a case to the UK Statistics Authority to working with statisticians in government departments to improve a specific statistical release. She is a graduate of the University of Oxford.Amy SippittResearch and Impact Manager -- Amy manages Full Fact's research projects and academic partnerships, and previously led our factchecking team. She is responsible for gathering practical evidence to measure and enhance our impact and performance. Amy joined Full Fact in February 2014 from Buttle UK, a charity that provides grants to vulnerable young people. She graduated with a Masters in Social Research from Birkbeck, University of London. Lev KonstantinovskiyFactchecking Engineer -- Lev is sits in the automating factchecking team where he focuses on Natural Language Processing. Formerly he was a maintainer of Gensim, a Python open-source machine learning package.Cassie StainesSenior Policy Officer -- Cassie joined Full Fact in 2018 as our Senior Policy Officer. She works on the follow-up that emerges from our individual factchecks, including correction requests and Parliamentary work, as well as driving forward our interventions into patterns of inaccurate claims. Before joining Full Fact, Cassie worked in policy and public affairs for a blood cancer charity, having previously worked in Whitehall as a civil servant.Full Fact TrusteesThe Board of Trustees oversees and is ultimately responsible for Full Fact. It is and always has been a cross-party Board, with members from the three main UK-wide political parties. The Board are not involved in the day to day operations of Full Fact, nor in editorial decisions. Those are the responsibility of the Director.Hon. Michael SamuelChairman -- Michael is Chairman of the Anna Freud Centre, a charity dedicated to children's emotional wellbeing, and trustee of five family charities. He is a director of a number of companies, one quoted and the others private, and was chief executive of Mayborn Group plc. He has been a Conservative Party donor. We are grateful to Michael for his past and continuing financial support.Baroness Julia NeubergerBaroness Neuberger entered the House of Lords as a Liberal Democrat Peer, but stepped onto the crossbenches shortly after being appointed senior rabbi at West London Synagogue in 2011. She is a former member of the Committee for Standards in Public Life. She is an adviser to the government on various issues and as a former Chief Executive of the King’s Fund she has extensive health experience.Professor Jean SeatonJean Seaton is the Official Historian of the BBC and Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster. She is the Director of the Orwell Prize for political writing, Events Editor of Political Quarterly and serves on several other editorial boards. She has served on various public inquiries, including on the broadcasting of Parliament.Lord David LipseyLord Lipsey is the deputy chair of the board. He is a non-affiliated peer and was previously a Labour Peer. He founded Straight Statistics in response to concerns about the abuse of data in public life and joined the Full Fact board when the two organisations merged. Before joining the House of Lords in 1999, he was was a journalist at the Economist, contributing the Bagehot column, as well as deputy editor of The Times and the Sunday Correspondent, and editor of New Society,. He is co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Statistics.Sharon WitherspoonSharon Witherspoon is the former Director of the Nuffield Foundation, one of the UK’s largest grant making organisations. She has written and edited a number of books on social research, and in 2015 was awarded an honorary doctorate from University College London for her contributions to the field. She is a Trustee of the Supreme Court Arts Trust, and is Chair of the Department for Education's Advisory Committee for its Evidence Based Programme Board.Lord John SharkeyLord Sharkey is a Liberal Democrat Peer. He was joint managing director of Saatchi and Saatchi UK before he founded his own advertising agency. He was Nick Clegg’s strategic adviser in 2007 and chair of the party’s 2010 General Election campaign, and also helped to run Margaret Thatcher’s successful 1987 election campaign.Lord Richard InglewoodLord Inglewood is a Conservative Peer and has just stepped down as chair of the influential House of Lords Communications committee. He was responsible for the inquiries into the future of investigative journalism, media plurality and broadcast general election debates. He is a former Conservative MEP and Chairman of CN Group, a publisher of local newspapers across the north of England.Simon BriscoeSimon is a Specialist Adviser (Statistics) to the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee and works with a number of data science start-up companies. Prior to 2010 he spent a decade as Statistics Editor at the Financial Times, after working in the City in investment banking research. Before that, he was a civil servant in the Treasury, Central Statistical Office and the EU in Brussels. He has published several books on statistics. www.simonbriscoe.com and Twitter: @simonbriscoeFull Fact Past TrusteesWe would also like to acknowledge the vital support of two of our founding trustees who have since stepped down:Lord Peter ArcherLord Peter Archer of Sandwell QC, a Labour Peer, former Solicitor General, former Ombudsman for the Mirror Group of Newspapers and founder member of Amnesty International.John LloydJohn Lloyd, founder and Journalism Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University; Contributing Editor of the Financial Times; former Editor of the New Statesman.Full Fact VolunteersWe are extremely grateful for the time donated to Full Fact by volunteers in all different capacities: we wouldn’t be here without them. Our volunteers donated over 4,000 hours of their time during the 2015 election, both in our election centre in King's College London and from home.King's College LondonPoliticiansNews MediaVotersCitizensFull Fact FundersAll donations greater than £5,000 received in 2017 are listed here. We are grateful for the support we receive from the following charitable trusts and individual donors:Nuffield FoundationJoseph Rowntree Charitable TrustEsmée Fairbairn FoundationBarrow Cadbury TrustPeter Samuel Charitable TrustOmidyar NetworkOpen Society FoundationsThe Tinsley FoundationWilliam De WintonFull Fact Corporate SupportersOur 2017 corporate supporters are listed below... In 2017, corporate donations added up to £240,000, or 25% of our total income of £956,000.FacebookFacebook gave £75,000. Facebook have donated £50,000 worth of advertising credits to Full Fact for the 2017 election as part of their commitment to tackle False News. Facebook does not have any say in how we spend them.GoogleGoogle Digital News Initiative gave £165,000... We also benefit from a general Google Grants scheme for charities which provides $10,000 worth of Google advertising per month. They do not have any say in how we spend them.Economic and Social Research CouncilIn 2016 we received £10,000 from the Economic and Social Research Council, with £10,000 more arriving in 2017, and £20,000 from the Office for National Statistics to set up the Need to Know project.Office for National StatisticsUniversity of EdinburghWe received £37,900 in research funding from the University of Edinburgh as part of its project: "Citizens’ Expectations on Brexit Outcomes: 'Fact' Transmission and Persuasive Power in a Digital World", with two thirds of that arriving in 2017, and the last third in 2018. Bytemark Cloud ServersOur web hosting is very kindly provided by Bytemark Cloud Servers. We like Bytemark so much that we were paying for their services. Then Matthew Bloch, their Managing Director, saw us on BBC Question Time and emailed to say they would stop charging. It was a lovely message to receive, late at night after a hard evening's work. Now they’re making it possible for us to run an ever larger and more complex site with no fuss and completely free.TwitterTwitter have donated £5,000 worth of advertising credits to Full Fact for the 2017 election. They do not have any say in how we spend them.AlamyIf you've noticed beautiful images on our site or social media, there's a good chance they were donated by Alamy, the world's largest online stock photo agency. After meeting their CEO James West by chance, he immediately saw how much timely relevant images would make a difference to us. Within a week Alamy gave us an amazing Christmas present -- access to their 90 million images to help make sure the facts stand out from the noise.Claims from politicians and the media can be effectively evaluated._625f929a-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd613715To provide free tools, information and advice so that anyone can check the claims we hear from politicians and the media._625f93bc-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd613715IndependenceWe are a registered charity. We actively seek a diverse range of funding and are transparent about all our sources of income... We're funded by people like you, by charitable trusts, and by other funders... Our running costs consist mostly of paying staff and renting office space in London. In 2017 these were about £678,000 and in 2018 we expect our costs to reach around £865,000. We have the usual overheads of a small organisation, from computer equipment and internet connections to doing our accounts. We are based in London so that we can meet with central government and major media outlets without the expense of constant travel. We'd like to thank everybody who donates and makes our work possible.ImpartialityWe don't take sides in any debate and don't support any political party or campaign. We've been quoted by politicians on all sides and corrected people on all sides. We have a cross-party Board of Trustees and safeguards in place at every level of our organisation to ensure our neutrality.NeutralityWe have rigorous safeguards in place at every level of our organisation to ensure our neutrality. These have been carefully constructed based on advice from our board and examples ranging from Amnesty International to the BBC. They include the cross-party board, fundraising safeguards, a conflict of interests policy, restrictions on staff political activity, feedback processes, operating guidelines, external reviews, and more. Most importantly, they include carefully recruiting staff who are sensitive to these issues.EffectivenessFactchecks alone are not enough to halt the spread of misinformation. We push for corrections where necessary, and work with government departments and research institutions to improve the quality and communication of information at source. We also provide a factchecking toolkit to give people the tools they need to make up their own minds.MisinformationIdentify misinformation_625f94a2-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd613715FacebookThe Full Fact Toolkit -- Simple practical tools anyone can use to identify misinformation -- How to spot misinformation: 'Fake news' is a complicated problem. In partnership with Facebook, we are sharing these 10 tips for helping you take the first steps to spotting misinformation.HeadlinesBe sceptical of headlines_625f959c-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd6137151False news stories often have catchy headlines in all caps with exclamation points. If shocking claims in the headline sound unbelievable, they probably are.URLsLook closely at URLs_625f9682-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd6137152A phony or look-alike URL may be a warning sign of false news. Many false news sites mimic authentic news sources by making small changes to the URL. You can go to the site to compare the URL to established sources.SourcesInvestigate the sources_625f975e-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd6137153Ensure that the story is written by a source that you trust with a reputation for accuracy. If the story comes from an unfamiliar organisation, check their 'About' section to learn more.FormattingWatch for unusual formatting_625f9862-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd6137154Many false news sites have misspellings or awkward layouts. Read carefully if you see these things.PhotosConsider the photos_625f9948-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd6137155False news stories often contain manipulated images or videos. Sometimes the photo may be authentic, but taken out of context. You can search for the photo or image to verify where it came from.DatesInspect the dates_625f9a2e-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd6137156False news stories may contain timelines that make no sense, or event dates that have been altered.EvidenceCheck the evidence_625f9b32-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd6137157Check the author's sources to confirm that they are accurate. Lack of evidence or reliance on unnamed experts may indicate a false news story.Other SourcesLook at other reports_625f9c22-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd6137158If no other news source is reporting the same story, it may indicate that the story is false. If the story is reported by multiple sources you trust, it's more likely to be true.Humour & SatireCheck whether the source is known for parody, and whether the story's details and tone suggest it may be just for fun._625f9d12-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd6137159Is the story a joke? Sometimes false news stories can be hard to distinguish from humour or satire.CredibilityThink critically about the stories you read, and only share news that you know to be credible._625f9e48-61d9-11e8-976c-bbc6fd61371510Some stories are intentionally false2018-05-27https://fullfact.org/about/OwenAmburOwen.Ambur@verizon.net