Oklahoma Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims.

Fact briefs address widely circulating claims about current events and policies that can be answered yes or no. We avoid outdated or obscure topics or claims with low engagement. We strive to write in a neutral, educational voice, avoiding buzzwords and politically charged language. 

Our objective is to verify facts, not debate political opinions. We strive to separate the claim (the fact) from the claimant (the individual or organization that is using it). We occasionally do spot-checks to ensure that we are achieving as much partisan/political balance as possible.

We will include the leaning or affiliation when citing groups as sources and any qualifiers on the information they provide. As a nonprofit organization, Oklahoma Watch has no commercial interests that conflict with our fact-checking. 

We are members of both the Institute for Nonprofit News and OptOut News, which require transparency in funding and even-handedness in reporting, including no membership in any party, or work aimed at boosting any politician or political campaign. Here is our list of funders.

All of our fact briefs have at least two sources linked below the fact brief and are fact-checked by two editors, one at Oklahoma Watch and one at Gigafact. We occasionally add original reporting in the form of data analysis or email exchanges.

We strive to always use primary sources but will occasionally use secondary sources, if primary sources are not available. 

Our yes/no format means we avoid certain questions that fall into the category of sometimes or maybe. When important context is needed, we add that.

In addition to claims that are partially true or false, we are unable to check claims for which there are no credible, available sources to verify or dispute them. Fact briefs are limited to 150 words, so some claims are simply too complicated to be explained with such brevity.

Usually, the sources for the claims are readily available online. But when they are not, we contact the claimant to ask for the source. If we are unable to obtain either online sources or sources from the claimant, we skip them.