Fact-Checking Guidelines

Fact-Checking Resources

Reliable and useful sources for verifying names, text, data, quotations, and other facts.

General Best Practices

To move things along, never spend more than five minutes on any one item you’re fact checking. If you can’t find it in those five minutes, simply note it to the editor and move on.

See the bottom of this page for more detailed information about the Darwin database.

Do Check

BU people

  • All names, schools, years under Constituent Search (in Darwin).
  • Their degree programs, if stated in the story—click Education for the school, then find the major by clicking on their school.
  • If you think the person is deceased, click Show advanced search options (bottom left). Then click Include Deceased and click Include Inactive; then, click Search (upper right).
  • Be sure you check every person’s schools/year, including professors, even those without schools/years mentioned in the stories. You never know; sometimes, someone mentioned without a school/year actually has one. Sometimes, only one school or year is mentioned in the story, whereas the person may actually have two or more, or they might have a school listed which they did not graduate from—pls note all that to the editor. Sometimes, a person might have attended CGS, but that is not mentioned in the story—pls be sure to let the editor know that, too.
  • Sometimes you get a person who changed their last name after graduating and Darwin never found out about it. If you are lucky and their first name is unusual (such as, say, Esmeralda), you can enter that first name, plus the school and the year, and you might get the original last name. If you still have no luck, note it to the editor to confirm.

Titles

  • Check on BU websites, particularly their official profiles on the college/school website. Also check on the BU Directory at bu.edu/directory/. Are they actually a professor as the article says or an assistant professor? Associate professor? Often, “professor” is shorthand for any academic title in an interview but we need to confirm, because “professor” and “assistant professor,” for example, mean two different things.
  • Often, you will find multiple titles for a single academic. This is generally due to error or promotion/not keeping the site updated. Once at least two conflicting titles have been found, it’s fine to query at that point and move on.
  • For nonacademic titles, check LinkedIn or their company’s website for the most accurate info. LinkedIn is a site where the person themselves updates their own info, so it’s generally either correct or their own error.
  • Look up people on LinkedIn to confirm job history. It will often give their titles and dates.

Business names

  • Check LinkedIn or company websites.

All factoids

  • For instance, check phrases like: “Boston is the smallest city in Massachusetts.”

Books

  • Check titles, authors, publication dates, and publishers on Amazon. If you can find a photo of the book cover and/or inside cover, that is generally the most accurate information.
  • Use imdb.com to check movies (titles, actors, producers, etc.).

Do Not Check

Opinions

  • Things like “I think Boston is the smallest city in Massachusetts.” Opinions are generally the speaker’s problem, but if it sounds wrong, be sure to note that to the editor for them to confirm.

Exhibitions (art galleries, etc.)

  • You can check for the name of an art gallery but confirming that someone actually exhibited there can be difficult.

Obituaries

  • Other than checking name/year/school in Darwin, you don’t have to check for an obit online unless something sounds strange. It should be up to the client to know if the person has passed away or not.

Darwin and Darwin Access

Darwin is BU Development & Alumni Relations’ database, allowing us to look up alums and their schools and years of graduation.

Getting access

If you don’t already have access, you must submit a help ticket to IS&T. Select the following three categories: Administrative Systems, Development & Alumni Systems, DAR Constituent Relationship Management. Then, explain in your note where you work and why you need access.

Logging in

Username: ad\yourname (for example: ad\rajohnso)

Password: Your Kerberos password

Maintaining access

Once you have access, you should log into it weekly or you risk losing access and having to start the help ticket process over. We recommend setting up an Outlook calendar reminder to do this once a week.